Sky Soap Closedown, The History Channel Start-up, Sept 1997

[myanthony1]

I remember being it like this:

The Christian Channel 5am- 7am

Sky Soap 7am- 12pm

Sky Travel 12pm- 12am (Monday Through Thursday)

12pm-6pm (Fridays)

Sky Sports 2 from 6pm Fridays and weekends until Monday

CNE 12am- 5am

[SailorCallie]

The Sky Network had their own version of America's SOAPNet? Damn, Rupert (Murdoch), you're fingers are everywhere.

[anicetune]

Channel idents were so classy in those days.

[myanthony1]

On my cable Sky Sports 1 was on transponder 47 and Sky Sports 2 was 24/7

[myanthony1]

Do you have a closedown prior to September 1997?

[myanthony1]

Did anybody have the German channels? I did though. My favourites were Teleclub and Super RTL.

[AnthonyUK]

No myanthony1 UK Cable didn't carry Super RTL nor Teleclub, firstly they didn't carry Super RTL as UK cable operators didn't have the broadcast rights to carry this and secondly Teleclub was(and is),a subscription only Astra delivered satellite and cable movie channel that is meant to be received and viewed in Switzerland and is generally not not carried on cable here again broadcast rights issues prevent that as it is a subscription channel.

[myanthony1]

Well at the time I was living in Switzerland and Germany and somehow I got Sky and other UK channels in those countries.

[AnthonyUK]

Many Astra english language UK intended channels were broadcast in the clear before BSkyB started the multichannels package in the mid 90's and encrypted most of them apart from Sky News which is still freely available across much of Europe at 19.2degE and 28.2degE position albeit in digital form. Teleclub dubs the movies it shows into German and aims it's channel at Swiss viewers,also you cannot officially subscribe to it outside that country that also explains why it's not on cable in the UK.

[myanthony1]

When I first arrived I used Astra.

[treffynnon19]

Martin Weedon signs off on this clip.

[AnthonyUK]

That picture's a little sparklie! I remember the old Maclean Hunter/East Lancashire Cablevision/Nynex/C&W/ntl cablehead end at glenfield park blackburn lancs;still there albeit under Virginmedia and digital thank goodness!

[steviegTVreturns]

It's sparklie because of the old VHS wear and tear, but the PQ of this channel was crap mind you.

[steeviebops]

It was on Astra 1B so the picture quality issues wouldn't be surprising, the satellite is reported to have had a fault which meant it couldn't be controlled properly and drifted off-station at certain times.

Transponders 19, 23, 27 and 31 were the worst hit for me.

[AnthonyUK]

But being cable,they have big dish antennae so sparklies for cable viewers shouldn't really be an issue;the huge dish antennae are bigger than recommended for DTH satellite reception because of signal losses that would present problems for a catv network. Home installations in Northern England using 60cm antennae were quite sparklie, with an 80cm dish this wasn't quite an issue.

[steviegTVreturns]

On our Cable we were lucky to have the full version of Sci-Fi from 7.30am to 4.00am, although Sci-Fi used to show 30 minutes of Bloomberg in the morning for some reason.

Although for a while the God Channel was broadcast on Eurosport in our area before they moved it to Animal Planet.

[AnthonyUK]

Some cable networks in the UK would carry this line up from Astra if they didn't have the 20 hours a day digital satellite encrypted version of Sci-Fi Channel UK carried via Eutelsat Hot Bird 1.